Chapter 13 #2
Is this what it’s going to be? Is this how he’s going to treat me?
“Cavin, I—” I try to pull back, but it’s useless.
“Don’t test me right now, Erin. I’m not in the damn mood.” His jaw flexes, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. “You have no idea what you walked into. No fuckin’ clue. So you’re going to walk with me, and you’re going to go into one of those private rooms where we can have a talk. Understood?”
“Is that what we’re going to do? Talk?” My voice shakes. “Because it doesn’t seem like people go to those rooms to talk.”
My cheeks burn because it seems as if the entire club is looking at me now. Watching. Waiting.
I want to slap him. I want to scream.
But more than that, I need to get out of this spotlight. I need him to stop dragging me around like I’m his property.
“Fine,” I hiss, yanking my arms free. “But you don’t own me.”
His laugh is dark… humorless and cold.
“That’s something we’ll discuss in private.”
I look toward the dance floor, searching for Bridget. She’s there, somehow miraculously oblivious to my confrontation with Cavin McCarthy, grinding against the masked man as if the world isn’t watching me fall apart.
Cavin’s hand moves to the small of my back—proprietary, possessive, burning through the thin fabric of my dress.
I remember the way he punished me, and heat coils low in my belly.
And for one crazy, stupid moment, I wish this were real. That he was mine and I was his, and he wasn’t leading me away to lecture me or punish me or remind me that I’m just a fucked-up political arrangement.
That maybe, maybe, the proprietary, possessive part of him wanted to protect me. That he did it because he… cared.
Whispers follow in our wake like ghosts.
The second we’re in the cool dimness of the hallway, I whirl on him.
“What the hell do you think you’re—”
He cuts me off by caging me against the brick wall, his hands planted on either side of my head, a move that’s laughably easy for him. He’s not touching me, but he’s close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him—can smell the whiskey and smoke and danger clinging to his skin.
“What were you thinking?” His voice is lethal and controlled, a barely restrained snarl. “Coming here. To my club.”
“Your club? It’s not—”
“It’s not public, Erin.” He snaps the words like a whip. “It’s mine. And you don’t belong here.”
“I can go wherever I fuckin’ want—”
“Not anymore, you can’t. Jesus,” he growls, his teeth grinding together. “I had half a mind to call off the wedding for this shite.”
“What?” My voice cracks, and for the first time, real consequences for my actions loom. I gulp hard.
No.
“Cavin. You can’t do that.”
He leans in closer, and I press back against the wall, but there’s nowhere to go. “You’re my fiancée. That means you don’t go wandering into places like this without telling me. Without protection. Without a damn clue what you’re walking into.”
“I have protection,” I fire back. “Your goons—”
“My men,” he corrects sharply. “Who are supposed to keep you safe. And instead, you gave them the slip and walked straight into the one place where you should never have set foot.”
“It’s just a club—”
“It is not just a club.” His eyes burn into mine, dark and furious and something else.
Something that makes my stomach flip. “And you’re not just some girl anymore.
You’re mine, Erin. Mine to protect. Mine to keep safe.
And I will drag you out of any place I see fit if it means keeping you from harm. ”
“I wasn’t in any harm,” I say, but my voice is small. Uncertain.
“You’re in my club,” he repeats, each word deliberate.
“People don’t know you yet. Men come here to drink and fuck and forget the world exists.
Rules don’t apply here the way they do out there.
Women like you, good girls, innocent girls, don’t belong here unless they’re being paid or they’re wearing a collar. ”
My breath catches on good girl.
Wait. He thinks I’m good and innocent? Why do I… sort of like that?
“So yeah,” he continues, his voice dropping to something dark and possessive, something that makes heat pool low in my belly.
“I stormed in there because seeing you sitting at a table in the middle of my territory, looking like that, with that fuckin’ purple band around your arm…
Do you know what that means, Erin? Do you have any idea? ”
“I didn’t—” I close my mouth because I’m starting to realize that, no, I don’t.
“It means you’re available,” he snarls, like the word’s filthy in his mouth. “It means you’re a free submissive looking for a Dom. Looking to be claimed.”
The blood drains from my face.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“Of course you didn’t fuckin’ know!” His hand slams against the wall beside my head, making me flinch. “Because you haven’t been vetted. You haven’t been trained. You walked into a den of wolves wearing a sign that says ‘Eat me,’ and you didn’t even realize it.”
He’s shaking, actually shaking with barely controlled rage.
“Do you know what happened to the last person who broke into my club without permission?”
I shake my head, genuinely scared of the man looming over me.
His hand moves to my jaw, tilting my face up to his, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“I beat the fuckin’ shite out of them,” he says. “And I threw them out. Physically. Obviously, I won’t do that to you—you’re a woman. And my fiancée.”
Now he’s saying it too.
His face is only a breath from mine now, his mouth close to my ear.
“But there are other ways I’ll have to punish you, Erin.”
“You can’t—” My voice shakes. “You won’t—”
“I can and will.” His thumb brushes over my bottom lip, and I hate how my body responds. How it melts. “Because seeing you in there with that band on your arm, looking like every man’s wet dream, sitting in my club like you’re up for auction—”
He pulls back just enough to look at me, and the raw possession in his eyes steals my breath.
“Makes me want to burn this fuckin’ place down. Makes me want to drag you into one of those rooms and remind you exactly who you belong to. Makes me want to mark every inch of your skin so no man in this city ever forgets that you’re mine.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. I remember the spanking he gave me before our first dinner, the way he effortlessly dominated me and left me furious and so fucking wet I couldn’t think straight.
“Now,” he says softly, dangerously, his hand sliding down to wrap around my throat—not squeezing, just holding, a promise of what he could do. “Are you going to walk into that room with me? Or do I need to feckin’ carry you?”
His eyes dare me to refuse.
And god help me, I don’t know if I’m more terrified or aroused by the darkness I see there.
“The room, Erin,” he growls. “Choose. Now.”
I try to twist in his grip, but it’s useless. He doesn’t answer. He just lifts me, one arm under my knees, the other around my back. I’m pressed against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat—steady, controlled—while mine’s racing.
He smells good. It’s a crazy thought to have right now.
“Put me down!”
“No.”
Part of me wonders what he could get away with in here. He’s not only the owner of the club, he’s Cavin McCarthy. He walks on fucking water. He plays by a code of rules that nobody wants to know.
“No! Let me—”
He carries me further down the hallway. A bouncer takes one look at Cavin and steps aside without a word.
“Where’s my sister?” I demand, panic rising in my throat. “Bridget? I need to—”
“Don’t worry about your sister. My cousin Declan is watching her,” he says. “You won’t be leaving without her, so stop looking like a fuckin’ trapped animal.”
He pushes open a door with his shoulder.
I’m going to be married to this man. We are going to share a bed. And right now, I’m too afraid to be alone with him. He has ripped through every one of my boundaries and fears like they were paper.
Thank god the room’s private and secluded. There’s a couch, a bar in the corner, and soft music playing. It’s almost… almost elegant. But there’s something else too. Things I don’t quite understand. Equipment that makes my stomach flip.
I’ve never seen anything like this.
There are… chains and things hanging from the ceiling. That looks like—oh my god. There’s a bench and something with leather straps. And there’s something that looks like—it can’t be described as anything but a whip.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
He sets me down, and I immediately step back, my eyes catching on something low to the ground. It’s padded with black leather, but it doesn’t look like the type of bench you… sit on. There are restraints attached to it. And the angle is all wrong. Too horizontal. Too… purposeful.
A cabinet stands open in the corner, and I catch a glimpse of what’s inside before I can look away.
Oh god. I don’t… I don’t even know the names of half these things. There’s something that looks like a flogger with leather tails. Something that looks like a riding crop.
My heart hammers.
On a side table, there’s a neat line of items that look almost surgical. Blindfolds. Silk scarves. Something metal that glints—handcuffs? Small glass bottles I can’t identify.
And then there’s the couch that suddenly makes sense. It’s positioned to face something wooden that looks… it looks like some kind of a cross.
This isn’t just a private room. It’s a playground.
I wonder if the walls are soundproof. I wonder if the way the door sealed when we came in means it’s locked to outside intruders, and no one would hear anything that happened in here.
And then there’s the mirror. A massive mirror along one wall with a gilded frame reflects everything back—shows me standing here, wide-eyed and frozen.
Is this what The Craic really is? This is why he didn’t want me to come here.
My heart sinks to my toes.
This is where Cavin comes. Where he’s comfortable. Where women bow to him.
I remember what I saw online. I remember the way women fawned all over him.